Where Am I?

Several people have stopped by to ask if I'm okay and have been wondering where I've been since I haven't blogged in almost a month.

First, I was moving for several weeks; packing, throwing things away, cleaning, and finally moving my things to storage. The good thing about moving is that you find all the things that you haven't used or worn in ages that you either throw away or look at in amazement. I tossed alot of clothes to the salvation army and in the trash. I also found a number of items that I had been looking for or forgot that I had. I gave some things away to family and friends. It was a good clean sweep.

It took much longer than I expected because I was moving my mom's things as well. It a strange and bizarre twist, it took three times as many truck loads to move my mom's things from my house than it did mine even though I had furniture.

Second, being too tired to blog during that time and too depressed for various reasons, got me out of the habit of blogging. After two weeks of non-blogging, I just couldn't seem to get back in the swing of it.

Third, I was tired. I mean, tired of writing. It's a bizarre thing to say because I love to write. I loved the freedom blogging allowed to share my views with people, to clarify my own thoughts and express whatever angst, joy, fear, anger, etc I was feeling. But, I realized that I was not writing anything brilliant anymore, just linking to some stories and adding my voice to the thousands that were saying much of what I might have to say. Still, I didn't feel like new ideas or thoughts were forthcoming, but, instead, felt bogged down and unable to write anything new and interesting.

I think I was also tired of writing about the war and its ongoing blood and pain. I still support it, believe we are taking the general right actions and feel that it is a matter of time that we must allow for the outcome to be as expected. However, I was so deep into it that I started losing perspective which contributed to my difficulty in writing anything significant.

So I took an unplanned, unannounced sabatical and have probably lost a number of readers (if not all). I'm not sure if this message actually means anything or has anyone to read it.

I'm not sure if this means I'm back or not.

Looking at the news lately, it seems that the media is still waiting with bated breath for all out civil war to happen in Iraq. Of course, they've been announcing it since the 2005 Iraq elections. It seems as along as people kill each other in Iraq for various reasons, they will keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. The problem is the problem that the media has had for quite awhile: lack of accurate reporting and analytical ability.

There are still days when I wonder if we shouldn't have bombed the place back to the stone age, then there are others when I realize that it wasn't really necessary; it was already a bizarre land of extremes with stone age inhabitants (or, at least people who haven't changed their way of life significantly for a millenia) and people who were living in Stalinesque modernity.

I don't believe it was ever more troops that we needed, but, to change the current outcome, it would have required many more deaths of Iraqis from Berlin like bombing. Fortunately for us, we didn't have to do it ourselves. It appears that these folks are quite capable of killing each other without the presence of a brutal dictator. It's sad, really and I think that sadness just seemed too overwhelming for me for a few weeks. It's hard to believe that some people are willing to kill each other in the name of religion or whatever else they feel the need to kill each other over.

This same sense of despair must have been what overcame the anti-war people. They haven't changed a thing.

I think I was also sick of the partisan crap that continues on in the face of the war when it is obvious that our two choices were to sit back and take the hits on the chin, occasionally capturing terrorists or take the war to the enemy, whoever and wherever that might be. I'm still surprised that people don't get Iraq.

There are days, though, when I feel like we are like water against a stone. We know we are eroding the stone a little at a time, but it's often not visible to the naked eye. In this case, I believe we've made leaps and bounds on occasion while similarly looking at the stone and seeing no visible change. It's hard to accustom yourself to the thought that real change won't be seen for a decade or more. It wil inevitably change because of globalization. It can't be stopped anymore than a stone can stop itself from being shaped by the running water.

But, we're going to suffer the pangs of this change for years and that is something we are just not good at. Thus, our efforts will ebb and flow and the change will be longer than necessary. People will die. It's inevitable. But people will change.

So will we. That's inevitable, too.

That's where I'm at. I'm in the middle of changing my life. I think I'm on to the next phase so I may be back fairly soon.

Stay tuned.